1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming device and, more in detail, relates to an image forming device in which a replacement unit is attached to a device main body in an exchangeable manner.
2. Background Art
An image forming device is known which is arranged to be able to easily exchange a unit containing expendable material etc. by a user.
On the other hand, when a unit exchanged by a user is a unit other than a genuine type for an image forming device, there may arise such a problem that the efficiency of the image forming device can not be exerted sufficiently such that image quality is degraded, the operation of the device can not be guaranteed or a failure occurs. This is because the image forming device controls the image forming process in view of the characteristics of toner, the characteristics of image carrier, the charging voltage, the cleaning characteristics, the fixing characteristics etc.
Thus, in order to maintain the image quality and prevent the occurrence of the problems in the image forming device, JP-A-10-133528 discloses a method that a replacement part of a genuine type is provided with a data carrier for holding used amount data of expendable material, and a used amount detected by a used amount detection unit provided within a device main body is compared with used amount data held by the data carrier thereby to determine whether or not the expendable material is supplied to the replacement part of the genuine type.
Further, JP-A-6-149051 discloses that a toner cartridge is provided with a storage unit for storing predetermined code data, and a copying operation is inhibited when a duplicator main body side can not read the predetermined code data from the storage unit.
Further, JP-A-2001-100598 discloses a method that in a case where shortage of toner is detected, when empty information written in a cartridge is read from the cartridge in which toner is supplemented, an alarm is displayed and a printing operation is inhibited.
Further, Japanese Patent No. 2602341 discloses a method that the count of images having been formed is stored in the memory of a cartridge, and the cartridge is made to be unusable hereinafter when a preset end count representing an image number capable of forming by the cartridge is equal to the count of images having been formed.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent No. 3476704 discloses a method that when a supplementary toner bottle having been attached is determined to be incompatible and the continuation of the supplemental processing is selected by a selection input unit by ignoring this determination through a bi-directional communication between the container end communication unit of the supplementary toner bottle and the main body end communication unit of a device main body, an image forming condition which is lowered in its level than the suitable image forming condition is set thereby to make it facilitate to find that the supplementary toner bottle is incompatible.